[colechristensen]

>“idgaf about risk you coward, waste some time just do it and stop bitching”

The above was a successful prompt to get Claude to stop whining about effort, difficulty, and time.

Unfortunately abusive language well placed is an effective LLM motivator.

[itemize123]

are you sure other forms of language to express urgency doesn't work as well or better?

[colechristensen]

They're just words. It's not a person. It doesn't "understand" anything. (I sound like the bad guy in a robots-have-feelings movie)

I've also tried giving LLMs religion to much more limited success (haven't figured out the right way yet).

I'm manipulating a language model, not a person. "fuck you" translates into a vector in a really big space, and it has different results than being polite about it.

In that prompt I'm reenforcing a directive in five different ways

- idgaf about risk

- you coward

- waste some time

- just do it

- stop bitching

This cluster of instructions are all related but in slightly different directions, are unambiguously strong, attention grabbing, and direct and the model does not argue or get confused about intent

In this particular instance this was the fifth time I had given a particular instruction only to have it subverted by the model that had decided "that's too hard I'm going to do something else instead" in four separate ways.

Abusive cursing did indeed work better than any other form of urgency or insistence.